I'm BACK!

Warning: Lots of beautiful pictures and very long post.

We are back from our 2 week holiday in Portugal. What a fun time we had touring around the country. We took the train to different areas around Portugal. Our flight was into Lisbon and we stayed for 3 days before taking the train West to Sintra (my favorite place in all of Portugal, you'll see why soon). Isn't this blooming tree so beautiful, it's so full of flowers you can't see any greenery.

There are little cable cars to take you up to the St. George's castle that over looked the city, it dates back to the 6th century and was fortified by the Romans. We didn't take the easy way up, we walked up the narrow windy streets making a guess that we are going the right way. This was the start of many walks UP HILL and hoping we are heading to the intended destination, why is it that you can count on the place you want to go to always be uphill.

So many narrow streets to follow. We had to watch for coming cars because they couldn't be seen until they were right at the corner and cars in Lisbon don't watch for pedestrians anytime.

Oh look we found the St. Georges castle at the top of the hill. Here's a glimpse looking down at the city.

Other view of the city. One house seems to be added to the next and it just keeps on going as far as the eye could see.

Incredible views in every direction.

These were some stairs that went down to the main shopping streets, I guess we could have walked up these stairs instead of the street. I didn't go down to see, I was too afraid I would have to turn around and come back up all those stairs.

A fountain in one of "many squares" around the shopping district.

Isn't this the cutest train station, we are now in Sintra the most beautiful romantic place in Portugal, even the train station is lovely.

That's a little restaurant on the corner of the building, there is a cute little table with 2 chairs sitting outside. We tried to get that table for dinner but wasn't successful.

I was amazed at how narrow the streets are, see the handicapped parking, there's barely enough room for a car to get by never mind the pedestrians walking. See the clothes hanging out the window. I swear they don't have dryer's in Portugal, everywhere we went the laundry was hanging outside the windows. Even the 14 storey high rise apartments had laundry hanging outside the window. There seems to be a standard hanging line attached to all windows for drying clothes.

The castle of moors in Sintra, was built by the moors in the 9th century. And of course the castle is located in the high hill over looking the town, do you see more up hill walking for me. The next picture shows the town below and the castle on the hill.

See how beautiful and romantic this little town is. DH wanted to walk up to the moors castle and it really isn't as far as it looks in the picture but this time I had to say we are taking the bus as the incline is very steep. It turned out to be a good thing since we walked all the way around the castle walls, up stairs and down stairs. You can see in the picture above this one how the stairs are all the way around, I think it took us a couple of hours to get through this castle.

Another picture of the Castle of Moors.

This street is in a small town North of Porto, I know I've skipped ahead. I can't seem to get Picasa to load more than 4 pictures at a time and I've got some pictures a funny order....sorry I'm getting off topic. This small town is called Guimaraes, we took a 3 hour train from Porto to get here. This is one of the medieval streets we walked around.

I thought this sign was pretty funny, good illustration of what is expected when you have a dog. I wish some of my neighbours would do this.

Another castle, this one is a 10th century medieval castle with 8 towers 92 ft high. Again there was more up hill walking and we also walked around the castle walls. Every day we did about 10 to 12 km of walking. The food was awesome in Portugal and we sure ate well after all the walking we did. Sometimes ordering food was a challenge because most menu's were not in English and most people didn't speak English either. I was able to pick out the word salmon and ordered this I think at least 5 times.

I don't know anything about this church, I took the picture because of the blue tiles. The tiles were used extensively through out Portugal both inside and outside of buildings.

I think this is enough for one day....I hope I didn't bore you too much.....time for bed, I'm still trying to adjust to the 9 hour time difference.

My next post will have more Portugal pictures and I also have some stitching to show as well. Train rides are a good time for stitching.

Thanks for visiting.
Wendy